Posted
by
timothy
on Monday February 04, 2013 @12:44PM
from the beggar-thy-neighbor dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "Internet access is an essential need on par with education access, but at what point do regulators recognize that? When will government officials acknowledge that widespread, guaranteed access is essential to fostering growth in the country? Somewhat surprisingly, that time is now, as the FCC is now calling for nationwide free wi-fi networks to be opened up to the public. The FCC proposes buying back spectrum from TV stations that would allow for what the Washington Post is dubbing 'super wi-fi,' as the commission wants to cover the country with wide-ranging, highly-penetrative networks. Essentially, you can imagine the proposal as covering a majority of the country with open-access data networks, similar to cell networks now, that your car, tablet, or even phone could connect to. That means no one is ever disconnected, and some folks – especially light users and the poor – could likely ditch regular Internet and cell plans altogether."

""Internet access is an essential need on par with education access..."

Internet access is on par with educational access? Seriously?

While I will concede it IS important, it is helpful, and makes many things convenient these days...I seriously can't put up there with education. Internet access, while really cool and fun, is still in the category of luxury item. You can get by just fine without it. You won't starve, you won't go into convulsions, you won't die without it.

If you really need it, and can't afford the luxury of having it run into your very own home, you can always go to the public library to use it there (ok, so looking at pr0n there might be a bit more inconvenient than in the privacy of one's own home).

I mean, widespread use and access of the internet (more specifically for most people the web portion of it) is a fairly recent thing. People still can get by just fine without it.

I mean..what's next...claiming internet access is a basic human right?

The market did. The market decided that, to quote one provider I spoke to when trying to get DSL access to a semi-rural area, "there's not enough money in that."

I am aware of this stuff because my family lives in said semi-rural area. Big vacation/tourist zone, about 10 miles outside a town of 3000. Their options for connectivity are: slow, expensive satellite (the faster, expensive satellite isn't available in their area either), or dial-up. One local telco says they might have DSL access in the area b

Internet access and educational access are quickly becoming the same thing. I have a 15 year old son. Of course he's good with computers and the internet (he's my son after all) but I'm amazed at what his high school coursework requires now. It all but assumes he has constant access to the internet. Hell he even uses his iPod on the school's wifi network for classwork in class.

Of course we have good access at home, but if a kid didn't it would be a huge handicap. Yes, they can go to school computer labs and the library, etc., but even that access is dwindling now that some schools all but assume a good computer and internet access at home. His school is a very good school, but all schools will follow suit eventually.

I donated 6 old computers from my business to a church in an inner-city area at the request of one of a pastor of a local church. They set up for the kids in the neighborhood to have a place to do their homework after school (and play around if their work was done). The pastor of the inner-city area said that the schools REQUIRED computers with high-speed access, but that 80% of the families in the neighborhood didn't have any internet access. It really opened my eyes as to how required it really has bec

Tell that to all the people that are employed because they self-taught themselves something using the internet. And yes you can go to the public library, plenty of people do, but the public library isn't always open & one isn't always available depending where you live. And based on your statements, people can get by "just fine" without education, it has nothing to do whatsoever with food, air, & water, but it's definitely a nice to have in that sense, so is the internet.

Spoken like someone that doesn't cross reference hundreds of different materials while learning stuff. Hell, just last night I reading about plumbing and watching videos on Youtube and that's fairly non-technical. Compare that with how I learned to deploy XenServer in a cluster using a NetApp SAN. Lots of cross-referencing there.Try that with any book and you're screwed. If you're talking about Internet access at the library then we're back to square one with OP.

I learned plumbing from my Dad and Uncle, electrical wiring from my uncle, tree trimming from another Uncle, sewing from my Aunts, auto mechanics, carpentry, and brick laying from others. And I did my first Linux build and install when the "Interenet" was CompUServe and FidoNet.

I've built, plumbed and wired houses, fixed cars and trucks, trimmed and felled a lot or trees, and now I'm an IT guy. Yes, the internet makes some of that easier these days, and it's pretty much essential for IT, but to say you ca

I agree. Not only is it a luxury item that is important, but it's too important for the government to control. Can you imagine the security implications and headaches a network like this would have? There are so many technical, economic and legal unintended consequences to this, it's not even funny. If the government might do anything (and even here I'm skeptical), they should help make sure that the current private means of getting on the 'net remain competitive and sooner than later, cheap Internet in many different forms will be ubiquitous without the unintended consequences that only a government can create.

I predict this will also be a new avenue for the US federal government to regulate the Internet into oblivion. This is a setup for a massive new power grab.

the Sausage Master is right. Single provider = single point of control, and that's not a good thing. Competition (and by that, I mean *real* competition, none of this "we'll create health care exchanges that cut off private companies at the knees so the only thing left is the government option" bullshit) breeds innovation and lower costs. Best thing the government could do for truly stimulating competition for low cost internet (not free internet, mind you, as that's a red herring) would be to sponsor some sort of X-Prize style competition to design and implement some regional or multi-state test platform for a currently underserved area, like the Midwest or parts of the South. Hell, the government doesn't even really need to do this - it could be sponsored by the Bill Gates foundation or something similar. I'm not an infrastructure guy, so I'm sure there are caveats that would need to be spelled out in advance, but having the FCC in charge would make something as stupid as the Janet Jackson Nipplegate thing seem like the most worthwhile undertaking ever.

You are confused about the proposal, you were probably similarly confused about the healthcare debate. The government providing a free option does not mean that private options can't and won't exist.The fact that you can get private health insurance in the UK and other places where you have socialized healthcare should show you that it's not all or nothing.

At 700mhz I'm likely to find my cable modem to perform a hell of a lot faster than this free wifi option. The security implications are interesting to

Yes, as when the U.S. government "failed" by financing and building the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s to bring cheap electricity to rural areas throughout the southern U.S. that were poorly served or completely unserved by the private utilities of the day. That's just one example of government stepping in to do what private companies only interested in short-term profits would never do. Today people in many countries enjoy better, more widespread, far cheaper Internet and Wifi access than the U.S.

I live up in Canada. My car insurance, electrical power, natural gas, water, and waste treatment are all provided as government-owned (that is to say, owned by *me*) utilies. Our rates are lower than the private rates in nearby provinces.

I'm currently charged exorbitant amounts of money for internet access by a private ISP (the local cable company). I would *love* for the city to take over last-mile Internet connectivity, and then a bunch of independent ISPs could offer different packages for upstream co

"But you also could have mentioned that government managed public wifi will once again demonstrate the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] as it slips inevitably into a cesspool of hackers, over-saturated bandwidth, government monitoring, censorship, and the never ending cries of "won't somebody please think of the children"

This is exactly what I was thinking. Free WiFi sounds great, but in practice it would most likely end up like this comment.

I seriously can't put up there with education. Internet access, while really cool and fun, is still in the category of luxury item. You can get by just fine without it. You won't starve, you won't go into convulsions, you won't die without it.

Same with electricity, yet that's actually quite important for society. You can't convince me that a kid who doesn't know how to use the internet is prepared to do anything more than wait tables. The internet is absolutely critical for being competitive.

Same with electricity, yet that's actually quite important for society. You can't convince me that a kid who doesn't know how to use the internet is prepared to do anything more than wait tables. The internet is absolutely critical for being competitive.

WOW! Didn't those without an electrical infrastructure invent and construct the one we have today? Didn't people who had no internet invent the computers and internet and create it's infrastructure?

Just how do you suppose they did that while waiting tables? I learned a lot of skills before there was ever an internet, but I guess it's because I'm smarter than you. I like the internet, I really do. But saying it's as essential as education just shows you to be a product of publik eduamcatin.

WOW! Didn't those without an electrical infrastructure invent and construct the one we have today? Didn't people who had no internet invent the computers and internet and create it's infrastructure?

Just how do you suppose they did that while waiting tables? I learned a lot of skills before there was ever an internet, but I guess it's because I'm smarter than you. I like the internet, I really do. But saying it's as essential as education just shows you to be a product of publik eduamcatin.

People who don't have internet access will not be a part of creating what comes next, just as those who did not have electricity were not part of those who created the internet.

Internet access, while really cool and fun, is still in the category of luxury item

Don't know what industry YOU work in, but without internet access I wouldn't be able to get a job, and I don't think I'm unique in that respect! Most employers use job search sites or their own web page to post employment opportunities, and if you have no internet then you can't get to them can you? The days of looking through the Want Ads in printed newspapers are more or less gone.

If I have internet, I can interact with several government agencies, easily. Without internet access, it costs me about four gallons of gas to drive to the agency's office, wasting three or more hours of driving time, plus whatever time I spend in the office. Telephone might replace some of those in-person interactions, but then I may have to wait a week for the paperwork to come through. With internet, the paperwork is done already, before I leave the web page

Absolutely. Not only does the government, businesses, employers, health care providers, schools, etc. automatically assume you have Internet access - and make their plans for interacting with you accordingly, but they are already generally assuming you have high speed Internet access AND mobile phone Internet access also.

Not having Internet access is much like not having access to a telephone 25 years ago - you basically cannot function in society effectively.

While I will concede it IS important, it is helpful, and makes many things convenient these days...I seriously can't put up there with education. Internet access, while really cool and fun, is still in the category of luxury item. You can get by just fine without it. You won't starve, you won't go into convulsions, you won't die without it.

I don't think it is that much of a stretch to compare it to the importance of public education. The Internet is the modern library. It is becoming the modern newspaper. It is becoming the modern Postal Service. It's becoming the modern radio, modern television, and even the modern teacher for some.

The FCC has already taken the stand that all Americans should have access to wire and radio services, not completely unlike how the USPS has had the goal of providing their service for all Americans, and how w

I mean, widespread use and access of the internet (more specifically for most people the web portion of it) is a fairly recent thing. People still can get by just fine without it.

You've ever seen what people are doing for education these days?

Homework assignments posted online, online research (one assignment from the McDonalds article on WiFi? A mock Facebook page about presidents). And let's not forget everyone's favorite teaching tool - Khan Academy and the "flip learning" where you do the KA lectures at

Internet access is the modern embodiment to Freedom of the Press, Speech, Religion, and Assembly, etc.In the internet you will find all these basic concepts of communication and association combined in one place.Access to the internet is the modern equivalent of all aspects of the First Amendment.It is very much just as important as a basic education, if not more so because it can itself be used to educate./idealistic rant off

Sure, business interests opposed to change will always rally against it. And they'll always find receptive legislators. But they won't always succeed in keeping things the same, which is why I've bought a car and not a horse and buggy. This specific proposal? Maybe it's wildly optimistic, but lets not act like the telecom lobbyists are gods. It's possible.

This may sound silly, but I think if everyone used Tor whenever they're on a public wifi hotspot, there would be fewer problems with privacy. All these horror stories of identity theft and bank info stolen etc... etc... have happened in many cases when people used unsecured wifi.

It's not encrypted from the exit node (How could it be? This is where the Tor network interfaces with the normal internet.).

Tor does have an advantage in that exit nodes are usually chosen somewhat at random and are switched often. You would get hours of someone's traffic at an unsecured wifi hotspot. As a Tor exit node, you would get a few minutes each of a thousand different people.

And for many people that may be a fair tradeoff. In an environment of free Wireless, commercial ISPs are going to have to compete even harder to gain customers. This means, as now, some ISPs are going to have even more censorship, and some are going to have less. You are free to buy as you wish, or not. Free wireless will certainly result in faster speeds for everyone who pays, as it has in Kansas City, and more choices in censorship and monitoring.

We get it; you don't like taxes. Fine. But you don't get to invent your own dictionary where you redefine words and then "correct" people who are actually using those words correctly. That is not a legitimate form of argument.

Pay is defined as "to give someone money for work done." Just because you don't agree with the money being given or how much is being given does not change the fact that the government is giving someone money in exchange for some form of work or service.

Wasn't the intention of getting that spectrum which was used for analog TV to use it for such things? If it isn't suitable for such, why the change? If the new digital TV spectrum was suited for this, why was it sold?

It's a load of BS. There's no need to buy back anything. Spectrum belongs to the people, and can't be legitimately sold, despite what the government thinks it can do. It's a public resource, and the most the government can do is manage it, not sell it.

Just take it back and use it for a better purpose than it's being used for now. No need to "buy" or compensate anybody - they've been making money off a public resource and have nothing to complain about if that resource goes away.

it's not sold, it's licensed, and the Federal government already manages the spectrum, in exactly the way you probably think they should. The term "buyback" would apply to existing licenses which have not yet expired. Its current use is contested because a large number of spectrum users never actually paid for the portion they've licensed out to begin with, so to have the government pay those licensees to abandon the license is a hotly debated topic.

But to pull the plug on licensees without giving them a viable alternative is highly disruptive to commerce. If hardware already exists which was designed for a certain band, and that band is suddenly pulled because of some bureaucrat's hardon for "free" wifi, then the infrastructure that is already in place would become useless without modification. The "buyback" funds are a way to encourage the infrastructure owners to go along with the relicensing; they would have the funds provided to convert or update the infrastructure to adapt to the spectrum change. Again, it might not be the best way to go about doing things, but it doesn't mean that pulling the rug out from under everyone is any better.

It's hardly necessary to get municipalities involved; in many Towns there are dozens of WiFi AP's per block.

And nearly every one of those is locked down because there's a very real threat that opening the AP will lead to a S.W.A.T. Team kicking down your door, shooting your dog, and men-in-black ransacking your house "looking for the kiddie porn" (or has MAFFIA prosecution overtaken that in seriousness yet?).

Fix that, and the problem gets solved organically. Oh, but reigning in out-of-control courts and DA

What's the source? Its a/. post of a journalist story about a journalist story about a journalist story then I gave up trying to track back.

I poked around fcc.gov and found almost nothing, so its either really old, really new, or really made up / out of context / unofficial daydream.

I'm an old time reader of FCC part 97 (and others!) so don't try to scare me off with "we need non-technical journalists to translate into prole-speak" I'm quite sure I could handle the primary source... if it actually exists.

Another thing is it won't be wifi although journalists confuse any wireless internet access with wifi. Lets say you get UHF tv channel 46 vacated and reassigned. That doesn't mean a magic firmware download, even to a SDR, will necessarily magically start working in that 662-668 MHz channel.

Quote: "The five-member FCC panel has yet to vote on the proposal. Mashable (http://mashable.com/2013/02/04/public-wifi-networks/) has reached out to the FCC for comment and will update this post with any response."

Imagine how much harder it would to insure those essentials if we didn't have technology created by smart people (education) with a means for those people to share ideas (stone tablets, scrolls, books, and now the Internet).

Also, needs are defined in different ways depending on circumstance, with no consensus. Certainly food is a need, but is sunshine? We get vitamin D from sunshine, and diet can't make up for lack. Sex is a biological imperative, but can at any time be put off until later.

Needs also form a sort of "hierarchy" [wikipedia.org], where once you are satisfied at a certain level, adding more at that level will gain you nothing. A company can't raise morale by making the bathroom even cleaner than it is - once the bathroom is "clean enough", extra work makes no appreciable difference. Once you have enough to eat, having more doesn't make you happier.

"Safety" is also a need, and depending on the school of thought it comes before or after food and water.

Once you have several layers of needs met, you reach the layer of "self actualization", which is loosely "the need to accomplish something".

That's what this proposal addresses - the need for people to better themselves, and to do something useful with their time.

This proposal is a good idea in many ways - ethically, economically, technically, environmentally. There's no down-side that I can see.

To take one example (economics), new businesses arise from innovation built on infrastructure. This type of infrastructure will foster an enormous boon in productivity, business, employment, and general well-being of people in the country.

In the same manner that the Interstate Highway System [wikipedia.org] fostered economic progress by giving companies easy access to cheap product delivery.

This is exactly the type of project that centralized government should be doing - it promotes growth, increased productivity, jobs, and general welfare. It's of benefit to the people, and not pork directed to specific selected companies.

Why? I am not a huge fan of Comcast and I do not mean this as a troll... I just don't understand why you would rather pay money to the government than businesses if you are paying the same amount and receiving a similar service.

First, don't assume the government has your best interests at heart (they don't), and second assume everything you do will be fully and completely monitored without the slightest expectation of privacy.

The government might not have your best interests at heart, but your best interests are closer to the government's heart then they are to the heart of the corporations that are in control of internet access now.

Without going into conspiracy theories and donning tinfoil hats, the idealistic situation where I can go "anywhere" and WiFi is available to me, seems nice. I wouldn't need a data plan from my ISP except for extremely rural areas where network penetration is nigh impossible.

Essentially, this is an initiative which attempts to bring everyone up-to-speed with current internet accessibility technology, and puts everyone on an equal playing ground. Folks who can't afford internet access, folks in rural areas wh

It's all well and good to talk about internet access being a "right" or a "public service," but please realize that simply because some government passes a law saying so, doesn't mean that wide-spread free internet access will come to pass. Take the example of my library: they are closed at times that someone might actually want to go, like in the evening after normal people from work, most of Sunday, and all major -- and most minor -- holidays. Their computer terminals seem to be something from the era of the IBM AT; and there are only 4 of them. The employees are surly and even aggressive, and don't care to be even the slightest bit helpful. And the entire building is decrepit and smells.

So I have the "right" to free information at a library (actually, I pay for it in taxes, but whatever), but the manifestation of that right is such that I don't actually want it. Yet we are expected to believe that, although our government can't run a library, despite having had hundreds of years to figure out, they're going to do a great job with modern and rapidly changing technologies. Call me pessimistic, but I don't see it happening.

The solution is to promote competition in Internet access: end the (government-created and propped-up) cable, phone, and wireless monopolies, and once there is a healthy market, let the market take care of lowering prices.

Recall that the U.S.S.R. declared food to be a basic human right, to be provided by the government. And who could argue with that, right? Yet the result was bread lines and empty shelves. In the U.S., we don't declare food to be a government-provided right, and yet we have so much food that our poor people are obese.

To preempt the flamers: no, I'm not arguing that the government should never have a role in assisting the poor (sometimes it should), or that companies are always good, or that the market is always perfect (they aren't; it's not). But I am extremely cautious in endorsing this as a good idea, for the above-stated reasons that have nothing to do with my own (non-existant) profit margins or political donations. So when others oppose it, please don't automatically ascribe such motives to them, either.

How can these jackasses continue to use words like "free" to make it sound like they are giving a gift to the nation when we are the ones they will damn well expect to pay for it with taxes? And why arent each and every one of you calling them out for it?

Because I already pay an Internet tax, to AT&T. I've been paying it to them for 10 years, and despite a whirlwind of technical advancement they haven't improved my service or lowered my price in a decade. In fact, my home service is more constrained and monitored than it was ten years ago.

Sounds more like you just want plan A with a different provider. Plan B involves actually changing the conditions that put you where you are, which you apparently arent in favor of since you are in favor of this "free" public wifi shit.

Or put it this way; we don't know what Plan B should be, but the benchmark for measuring its success is pretty simple. Whatever it takes to be able to tell AT&T, Time Warner, Windstream, etc. to go fuck themselves sideways and really mean it. Like we do when selecting a supermarket. Real competition (municipal broadband included) without pricing collusion would allow that.

I didnt suggest in any way that I was more sane than anyone else. I asked why all those capable of understanding that "free" != "paid for by taxes" (no matter how many mental gymnastics you're willing to go through to say otherwise), arent even bothering to point the simple truth of it out anymore.
It takes a pretty solid application of denial to come to any other conclusion. But what angers me is that what appears to be the majority of Americans dont even try anymore. They see "free" and say, "Hey! Great!

Ya. Like the government doesn't already illegally copy and store all our data they can get their hands on. And then tries to imprison the whistleblowers that let us know they were conducting these illegal acts. I can think of no one better to host my wifi sessions *rolls eyes*.

A strategy like that can only help to cut out the middleman and increase data availability. (your private data, availability to the fascist nutters.)

I'm more interested in how long it takes someone to figure out the gold standards for privacy online in today's environment and make a debian distro that enables fine grained control of these standards with ease.

When are we going to build an encrypted network on top of the internet and just cut out the government clowns?

If religious groups are fighting tooth and nail against a woman's right to sexual healthcare, you can imagine how much of the Internet they would want banned on public wifi. The blacklists would be longer than both of their works of fiction combined.

I think what really needs to happen is reform of how ISPs do business and what they charge, bringing a basic level of internet service to something resembling the way basic wired telephone service used to be, so that all but the most poverty-striken can get access to it for a very low price. Let's face it: if all you need is a "subsistence" level of internet access (enough for email, slow but usable web access, no streaming of movies, large downloads, or online gaming) then you only need 1Mb/sec (or less) on the downstream side, right? With the way web pages are bloated with Flash and Javascript these days they would load as slow as pages loaded when dialup was the norm, but it'd be better than nothing, right? That's what I think needs to happen.

As far as I can tell the only information available on this is what Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post says about it. Absolutely everything else seems to be simply a rewrite of her article. Given the track record of any popular media reporting on technical issues it is hard to tell for sure what the proposal actually entails.

This being a non-classified Government proposal circulating freely among businesses, it should be readily available to the public somewhere.

. . . and every phone must have GPS enabled (for safety of course), so that someone can know where everyone is all the time (for safety and rescue), and how fast they are moving at any given moment (to make sure the roads are safe, and incidentally charge you for road usage). And maybe we'll chip all of the children like we now chip pets, so we can always identify them and return them to their parents. Think of the children!

The US government is selling off Upper L-Band TM, lower L-Band TM, and S-Band TM allocations within the next 5-10 years. Those are THE beachfront, prime spectrum bands that the US government owns that can be used for cell networks. The plan has been rolling for at least 5 years already now. It does take a while to upgrade every single test asset that the government uses to the new C-Band spectrum. It's going to take probably 75% of the money that the government will get from sale of this spectrum to pay

Hi. If you mean held for by the government in that they manage and regulate it, then yes. That's what they're supposed to do. If you mean to imply that only the government uses it, then you're amazingly misinformed. Here's a chart that shows the usage allocation of US spectrum. The narrow bar under the spectrum indicates the primary user (commercial-only, government-only, shared)
US Frequency Allocation Table [doc.gov]

I'm not happy about the government running it censored - once the government has shown that they can keep the evil dirty porn and pirate sites blocked (Even though any script-kiddie will soon learn how to bypass this), there will be strong pressure on private ISPs to follow. Running it uncensored isn't going to fly for long politically, so it'd be better to have the government keep their hands off.

No, that's not going to work. This is American politics we're dealing with.

Every special interest with lobbyists will step in with demands. The RIAA and MPAA will obviously want all pirate sites blocked, that hardly needs stating. But then the anti-gambling pressure groups will follow. The 'for the children' people will start demanding sites providing suicide advice or promoting anorexia be blocked. And as for the porn, it won't be the.xxx domain that's blocked: Before the network is even running, the very

If it was free a geostationary satellite would make access available to everyone even in very remote areas. There is the ping time issue but that is a performance problem; there are commercial alternatives available to almost everyone so this would prevent the commercial providers from getting killed.My worry is what DHS and the Jesus lobby would do with the network control.

Yeah, the ping times are the weak part of that plan. Providing internet service to 300 million devices from a single satellite is the easy part.